Cisco ESW 500 Series Switches: Cisco Small Business
Pro

A Cost-Effective, High-Performance Network Foundation to Keep Your
Business Moving

In a world that never slows down, your business needs to keep moving.
That means keeping employees connected at all times--to each other
and to the business applications they need to do their jobs. Imagine
a network that provides a single, high-performance platform for all
of your business applications. Where your employees don"t have to
worry about reduced productivity because the network is down or
because a vital application is unavailable or running too slowly.
Imagine being able to manage your entire network platform from a
single interface, and being able to easily add new data, voice,
video, and wireless applications as your business evolves.

Cisco offers a network solution for small businesses that can make
this vision a reality. The Cisco®
ESW 500 Series Switches are cost-effective, easy-to-use switches
that provide the foundation of your small business network. These
high-performance switches deliver the reliability you need to keep
your employees connected and productive, preserving the availability
of your essential applications and services to keep your business
moving.

Cisco ESW 500 Series Switches

The Cisco ESW 500 Series, part of the Cisco Small Business Pro
Series, is a group of managed Ethernet switches that provide wire-speed
Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet connectivity, integrated security,
quality of service (QoS), and Power over Ethernet (PoE) to support
all of your business network needs. These switches integrate easily
with Cisco Small Business Pro products as well as the Cisco Smart
Business Communications System to provide a complete data, voice,
video, and wireless networking solution for your business. With the
Cisco ESW 500 Series, you can take advantage of a proven network
solution and a broad portfolio of high-performance, easy-to-manage
switches that are designed and priced for small businesses.

A Cost-Effective, High-Performance Network Foundation to
Keep Your Business Moving

In a world that never slows down, your business needs to
keep moving. That means keeping employees connected at
all times--to each other and to the business
applications they need to do their jobs. Imagine a
network that provides a single, high-performance
platform for all of your business applications. Where
your employees don"t have to worry about reduced
productivity because the network is down or because a
vital application is unavailable or running too slowly.
Imagine being able to manage your entire network
platform from a single interface, and being able to
easily add new data, voice, video, and wireless
applications as your business evolves.

Cisco offers a network solution for small businesses
that can make this vision a reality. The Cisco®
ESW 500 Series Switches are cost-effective, easy-to-use
switches that provide the foundation of your small
business network. These high-performance switches
deliver the reliability you need to keep your employees
connected and productive, preserving the availability of
your essential applications and services to keep your
business moving.

Cisco ESW 500 Series Deployment Scenarios

•
Move beyond your traditional phone system: The Cisco
Smart Business Communications System lets you transform your
business by bringing together all of your communications
onto a single network. The Cisco ESW 500 Series works hand
in hand with other Cisco Smart Business Communications
System products, such as the Cisco Unified Communications
500 Series for Small Business. Together, the solution lets
you support all of your company"s phone calls, messaging,
and data. Your employees can be more productive, and you can
save money by managing and paying for just one network.

•
Securely extend network access with wireless: The
Cisco ESW 500 Series Switches with PoE can connect and power
your wireless access points while supporting robust security
and identity services to protect your wireless environment.
By choosing Cisco ESW 500 Series Switches with both PoE and
Gigabit Ethernet connectivity, you can support new wireless
technologies such as 802.11n and extend the life of your
wireless technology investment.

•
Connect your small business: The Cisco ESW 500 Series
Switches meet the needs of a range of small businesses. The
10/100 Fast Ethernet switches can provide outstanding
desktopconnectivity in small networks to connect computers,
printers, and servers. They are well suited to new
businesses starting up or businesses that previously used
basic, unmanaged switches but now require support for
additional features such as QoS traffic prioritization and
advanced security. The Gigabit Ethernet switches in the
Cisco ESW 500 Series can go even further, helping you
achieve optimal performance from your desktop PCs, servers,
and other shared devices with Fast or Gigabit Ethernet
connectivity.

Features and Benefits

The Cisco ESW 500 Series switches provide security,
management, and other capabilities far beyond what
unmanaged or "smart" switches can provide, without
requiring you to configure (or pay for) features you
don"t need. The switches were designed to be part of the
complete line of Small Business Pro networking and voice
communications products that work together as part of
proven, fully integrated, easy-to-use small business
solution. The Cisco ESW 500 Series provides:

•
Outstanding performance: The Cisco ESW 500 Series
supports up to Gigabit Ethernet speeds to deliver optimal
network performance, enabling you to add high-bandwidth
data, voice, video, and wireless applications. Ultimately,
the switches give you the ability to meet more rigorous
application demands and help ensure that your employees
always have access to the tools they need to be responsive
to your customers and each other.

•
High reliability: Cisco ESW 500 Series Switches have
been developed and rigorously tested to provide reliable
connectivity and performance, especially when supporting
advanced voice, video, and wireless services. They also
support an optional redundant power supply that provides
uninterrupted failover to help ensure continuous operation,
without the need to reboot, even if the primary power supply
fails. These features help you keep your network available,
prevent costly downtime, and keep your employees and
customers connected to the applications they need.

•
Power over Ethernet: Cisco ESW 500 Series Switches
are available with up to 48 PoE ports of Fast Ethernet and
24 PoE ports of Gigabit Ethernet connectivity. PoE allows
you to power network-attached devices such as IP phones,
video cameras, and wireless access points directly over the
Ethernet connection, without an external power supply. The
result is a simpler and less expensive deployment, without
the need to install a separate power supply for each
connected endpoint.

•
Simple configuration and management: Cisco ESW 500
Series Switches are designed to be configured and managed by
small businesses or the Cisco partners that serve them.
Whether you are installing a single switch or an advanced
voice and video communications system, simple graphical user
interfaces (GUIs) help your staff easily configure, manage,
and troubleshoot your network. The Cisco ESW 500 Series
includes an embedded web-based Configuration Utility Device
Manager designed specifically for setting up the ESW 500
switch (Figure 3).

For system wide deployments, you can use the Cisco
Configuration Assistant, a GUI-based application that
configures all of the devices that are part of Small
Business Pro Series as well as the Cisco Smart Business
Communications System. Both the device manager and Cisco
Configuration Assistant feature Cisco Discovery Protocol
to automatically discover all Cisco devices and allow
them to share information about one another. They also
employ Cisco Smartports technology, which provides
preset options for quickly configuring all ports on a
Cisco ESW 500 Series Switch, including QoS, and security
features (Figure 4). Once the network is deployed, Cisco
Configuration Assistant can generate status reports,
synchronize passwords, and upgrade software across all
of your Cisco network devices. All of these features
reduce the time and effort your staff must devote to
network deployment and troubleshooting, so that they can
focus on your business priorities. Support for the Cisco
ESW 500 Series will be included in Cisco Configuration
Assistant version 2.0. The tool is available for
download free of charge at
http://www.cisco.com/go/configassist.

•
Strong network security: Cisco ESW 500 Series
Switches provide several layers of security to protect your
business. Support for IEEE 802.1X port security can help
ensure that only authorized users and applications can
access your wired and wireless LAN. Access control lists (ACLs)
can restrict access to sensitive portions of the network and
guard against attacks by keeping unauthorized users from
logging in. The Cisco ESW 500 Series also supports virtual
LANs (VLANs) to segment traffic and workgroups, and MAC
address notification features to allow administrators to
track where and when users enter the network.

•
Easy integration with the Cisco Smart Business
Communications System: The Cisco ESW 500 Series was
designed to integrate with the Cisco Smart Business
Communications System (SBCS) to provide a complete data,
voice, video, and wireless networking solution for your
business. For example, the Cisco ESW 500 Series ships with a
default configuration that allows for "plug-and-play" in a
Cisco SBCS voice deployment. Simply connect an IP phone to
the network, and it immediately powers up and gets a dial
tone.

•
Expansion ports: The Cisco ESW 500 Series offers
Small Form-Factor Pluggable (SFP) expansion slots that give
you the option to add fiber-optic or Gigabit Ethernet uplink
connectivity to the switch. With the ability to increase the
connectivity range of the switches, you have more
flexibility to design your network around your unique
business environment, and to easily connect switches on
different floors or across the business.

• 5-year
enhanced Cisco Warranty: Cisco ESW 500 Series
Switches come with a 5-year limited hardware warranty that
includes next-business-day advance hardware replacement
where available, otherwise 10 business day advance hardware
replacement. In addition, Cisco offers software application
fixes for the duration of the warranty and telephone
technical support, through the Cisco Small Business Support
Center, at no charge for the first 90 days following the
date of purchase. The warranty also features complimentary
access for one year to online customer chat support during
local business hours.

Cisco Configuration Assistant 2.0 will allow
device configuration and system management for
streamlined integration with Cisco Smart
Business Communications System and other Cisco
Small Business Pro products